Some coverage of Michael Moore’s showdowns with CNN.
Peter Chowka:
“It does not seem unreasonable to think that Moore’s performance with Blitzer on CNN was, in large part, calculated to generate controversy about and rekindle interest in the lagging Sicko box office . . . Moore’s schtick was like throwing red meat to his large core fan base that already thinks that CNN is right of center, too soft on (if not in cahoots with) the Bush-Cheney administration, and complicit in the selling of the Iraq war to the American people.”
Drifting Through The Grift:
“It is also elucidating to note in Moore’s point by point rebuttal of the CNN report on his website the fudging boils down to such shocking disagreements as $6000 vs $7400 and 77.5 vs 77.6. Nits.
Of course, all of this presents an opportunity for Moore to turn to another frequent creationists tactic. Persecution and paranoia. Instead of a reasoned response of exploring the differences and discussing the greater truth, Moore chooses to accuse CNN of being bribed by HMOs and the pharmaceuticals. Disagreement, no matter how mild, is sinister and heretical.”
Dan Gainor:
“Gupta accused Moore of “cherry picking” certain data from various reports on health care to substantiate his case and said Moore’s lack of consistency could have consequences on the drive for socialized care. “It makes it very hard to advance the argument if you’re not getting the numbers right,” Gupta said.
Moore also accused Gupta of ignoring that one of his sources had donated money to various Republican candidates. Ironically, Gupta and Moore have one thing in common ““ they both have donated money to political candidates, but all to Democrats in recent elections.”
Update -
Dr. Sanjay Gupta:
“I also worry that Michael, who is an accomplished film maker, tried to leave people with the impression that health care is free in many other nations and there is a state of utopia. True, Michael did talk about increased taxes in his film, but he also kept calling it “free,” which made it nebulous. No question, there are many valuable things to learn from other health care systems, but we should know all things before wholeheartedly endorsing one system over another. We should know that taxes will be much higher, as is the case in France where they are crippled by their health care system.”
Related posts:
- Michael Moore loses it on CNN
- Ezra Klein on mainstream media’s fear of Michael Moore
- The AMA supporting Michael Moore?
- CNN responds to Michael Moore
- Sicko: "The perfect Michael Moore situation"
- Dr. Steven Nissen: "The Michael Moore of the medical industry"
- Moore and Stossel go at it
{ 33 comments }
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You know, ultimately, it really does not matter what is in Moore’s movie. What matters is that many Americans die every day because they cannot get appropriate medical care.
The working-class poor who often toil without benefits are especially effed. This is a societal shame.
My mother has multiple sclerosis, which goes untreated because she cannot afford more treatment with her current medical bills. Thank god she is not wheelchair bound yet. She has finally found a doctor who charges on a sliding scale, a native of India who came to work in Appalachia, unlike many of his American counterparts who went to work in greener, higher-paying pastures. My mother also has a heart condition, which goes *completely* untreated, and arthritis, for which her doctor gives her samples. I just recently had to undertake a battery of tests to search out the underlying causes of my chronic anemia. Even with insurance, I am left with $1,000 to pay out of pocket. The health care *industry* in this country is a scandal. Those of you who are against reforming our healthcare system are usually woefully ignorant about the issue beyond its limited impact on you, or you are the ones who stand to benefit the most from it. People such as yourselves made me turn against Christianity many moons ago, but I still have the urge to pray that you all will one day have to live the very type of life that you support for others, when it comes to this issue. Somehow, your eyes need to be opened. Of course, if you are a doctor and you stand to make less money under universal healthcare . . . well, I guess that tells the rest of us what we need to know. I’m sure your PAC reps will go into overdrive on your behalf. – Kathy
Boy do you hate Moore.
You really managed to cherry pick. While the rest of the Blogosphere is cheering Moore on for calling CNN on its sloppy fact checking–fact checking which they only seem to bother with when interviewing Moore rather than claims by the government–you managed to find some of the only negative comments about his appearance.
You must really be afraid that he’ll change the status quo.
my town with 2 major hospitals has a FREE CLINIC. one night a week, physicians donate their time to see people who are unable to pay for routine medical care for whatever reason. it probably comes to about 200 patients a month. those who have hypertension or diabetes have a doctor to manage their care. there is a limit on what care is given out… but even expensive tests are ordered WHEN INDICATED. they stay with the clinic until they are 65 and are eligible for medicare. Lets give some credit to the services which are being provided FREE OF CHARGE in my town and i woudl bet many other towns in the USA. The patients here come every 3 months or so to get medication REFILLS which are paid for by private donations.
anon 7:02 said “Of course, if you are a doctor and you stand to make less money under universal healthcare . . “
Universal coverage would be a taxpayer-funded WINDFALL for primary care doctors like myself. I still don’t support it, as I don’t feel that indiscriminate use of finite healthcare resources is a “right” (this mentality is what is driving medicare/medicaid to consume such a large & increasing % of tax dollars).
And I too know of MANY ways that someone without means could obtain care, even for complex conditions like MS.
I believe that much of the uninsured population simply CHOOSES not to buy insurance, since they know care will be provided anyway, if they are affected by a catastrophic illness/injury e.g.
I donate 100,000 dollars worth of care every year, if Doctors are greedy I don’t see much of it. The vast majority of physicians do alot of free work. It is expected, yet you don’t see your local McDonalds donate 100,000 dollars worth of quarter pounders every year to the hungry or every local Walmart 100,000 dollars worth of clothes.
All of you need to read anon 7:02, again and again and get a clue.
happyman, you in particular are lost when it comes to reality. Let me tell you something that is absolute truth and I don’t much care if you believe it or not. I had a job for 30 years with good benefits and then new owners bought out our company, they used benefits to force all the older employees out, they actually cancelled all company sponsored benefits. They left all of us to find private ins on our own. Well I am over 50 years old and I have cancer (CLL)…You want to know what my premiums would have been? Well since I was previously covered and according to HIPAA laws I had to be offered a plan, because I had lost my ins through mo fault of my own, so along comes AETNA(I think it was them) who offered me a plan for 1,258.00 per month with maximum on prescriptions being 2,500.00/ per year. You want to tell me how to make that work?
Also you can tell me where to get $1,258.00 for a monthly premium. You think the majority of people can pay out of pocket this kind of money? this is just one example of what is happening all over our country but you guys absolutely do not see it, nor do you care.
You keep right on fighting for your big paychecks and when you fight yourself right out of jobs because no one can afford to come see you, then you tell me where you think you will be? You guys couldn’t care less about the American people and slowly but surely we are all getting on to you.
Also, please give me the address of where I can go get FREE care. I will move there next month but I want it in writing, from you, that I can get FREE care when I come. Address please? im not talking about ER care but I mean real medical care where my treatments will be provided and I can get all my medications and i don’t have a 1,258.00 a month premium..
I’ll make you a better deal than that HAPPYMAN. You give me this address (and your written guarantee) that they will provide my free care and I will fax you all the information to prove everything I just said to you. If you cant really do all that then you need you pay attention and come out of the make believe world you live in.
Ohhhhh, using McDonalds as a comparison was a bad idea. You ever have a sick child in the hospital? obviously you haven’t because if you did you might know something about Ronald McDonald houses (not that you would use them but you might get to know other parents who do)and what they provide for FREE for parents of families of hospitalized children all over this country.
Walmart? I guess you didn’t go by any of their parking lots in the days following Katrina. If you had you would have seen how much they were donating to those effected by that disaster. Call them and ask them how much water they sent to Katrina victims? Yes, water, such a little thing, but such a BIG thing for our GOVT. to organize for people who were dying of thirst.
“Also, please give me the address of where I can go get FREE care. I will move there next month but I want it in writing, from you, that I can get FREE care when I come. Address please? im not talking about ER care but I mean real medical care where my treatments will be provided and I can get all my medications and i don’t have a 1,258.00 a month premium.”
Now apologize to the nice doctor.
But please don’t move here.
Obviously, (good doctor) you don’t know the difference between being destitute, and not being able to afford 1,258.00 a month or 15,096.00 per year in ins premiums. I never said I was destitute but I cant afford 15K in insurance yearly either, let alone thousands in medications a month. So what is your point? Try Again!
“but you guys absolutely do not see it, nor do you care.”
Let me get this right. Your ex-employer screws you and it’s the doctor’s fault? Instead of complaining on a doctor’s website maybe you need to get togther with the other screwed employees and go after your ex-employer.
PS: Every town/city I have ever worked in has clinics that have offered some type of low-income or sliding scale payment schedule. It is a matter of doing the research though and getting in contact with social services. Believe it or not docs are as frustrated with the insurance system of the US as other people. The difference is we here story’s like your’s every day. I regularly waive my fees for those without insurance and can’t (not don’t want to) pay for my services. But the simple fact is you can’t rely on the docs to be the ones raking the burden’s of the system. As pointed above, every doc waives a good percent of his/her workj fees for various reasons. You just don’t see it. The comparison to Ronald McDonald house is laughable. Yes these houses provide good services. But on a % of income basis. McDonalds donates only a small fraction of it’s income to what average doctors lose/waive every year (remember mopst docotors are small businessman in a systeme where we CAN”T charge what we want). Your venom is directed at the wrong people
It is a cycle and not all of the employers are to blame when this happens. They are trying to keep their businesses alive and with the ins premiums being constantly raised some of them can’t do it. So it comes back to why are ins. premiums being raised to the point that employers can’t afford to cover their employee’s? Well part of it, is because of your use of defensive medicine. Do you think all these tests you order are free? Then comes the backlash. To cover the cost of all this unnecessary testing, premiums must constantly go up. you are testing yourself right into an NHS. Why don’t you see that?
Im sure you do hear stories like this everyday, because it is happening all over the country. BTW, most employee’s have checked into the legalities of what their employer’s have done. We have been told it is perfectly legal as long as when they do it they cancel all benefits…Health, life, 401K contribution, etc… for ALL employee’s. They cannot discriminate and pick and choose who they will cover. It is all or nothing.
but, yes, we can quit and almost all states will allow unemployment benefits due to the employer’s breaking the wage contract, as benefits is part of the wage pkg. so when they cancel that, they have broken that contract. So in essence we get screwed twice. We lose our benefits, and to get even, we can settle for less than half our work wages. you do know that unemployment is less than half your wages?
Then their is the issue of private ins. hell they aren’t stupid. They know exactly what they are doing when they offer you that mandatory HIPAA plan. They price it so high they know you can’t afford it, so it is really the same as offering you no plan whatsoever. yes, we are the one’s slipping through the cracks of health care. And we are gradually becoming a majority. you should be afraid of us, because we are the one’s who will fight our ass of to get an NHS in this country.
We also aren’t stupid or without any resources at all. We don’t just sit back and let everyone else do the work, we know how to rally to gain support for our cause.
You are always so good at passing the buck, but most of us knows exactly where the blame needs to go.
This is why health insurance should never have been linked to the workplace in the beginning. What started as a nifty benefit to entice workers became a huge burden to corporations when it became the status quo.
If health insurance had stayed an individual purchase, maybe regulated similar to car insurance, then things might look a lot different today.
I honestly don’t think you’ll ever see a government run NHS. You’ll never be able to push “Big Insurance” out of the boat. My guess is the system will end up requiring everyone to buy regulated private insurance thus shifting costs of the sick to the healthy, but doing so through a private system that still makes a profit. This is necessarily what I would call the best system, but that’s where I see things heading.
Remember also, doctors don’t influence your insurance premiums. Insurance companies have docs sign contracts to ensure patient flow, and then tell doctors how much they will be paid for services. Even if doctor’s rate went down their is no incentive for an insurance company to lower rates because they make more profit maintaining them.
One of my favorite bloggers concerning health insurance and its economical basis is Miami Med. He has a great post here about this topic:
http://medicaleconomics.blogspot.com/2007/06/wicked-truth-hypothetical-case-scenario.html
Wait a sec…!
I thought the there-is-no-med-mal-crisis-we-need-universal-health-care types were claiming there is no such thing as defensive medicine?
I thought you all felt that defensive mnedicine was a cop-out, that it didn’t exist, and had no impact on healthcare costs, nor on malpractice premiums or the risk of a malpractice suit?
So which is it? Are costs raised by defensive medicine (which you claim does not exist, nor can it be defined) or not? And if so, would you be willing to impose “malpractice reform” in exchange for universal coverage?
Amazing how some people want it both ways.
I’ve been following these discussions for some time, and I am trying to understand the venom toward physicians.
Primary care, at least, is relatively cheap. Yes, I know, a visit with a primary care physician can range from a few dollars to several hundred dollars. But many of us, myself included, make special arrangements for those without insurance, or with insurance plans with which we do not participate. I am happy to have these patients. As I told one patient whose insurance I do not accept, and who asked for a (deeper than I already give) discount, “Aren’t I worth $300-$400 dollars a year?”
But I am not the insurer. I am not the pharmaceutical company, pharmacy, hospital, physical therapist, durable medical equipment provider, home health aid, or nursing home. I have no financial interst in any of these ventures, and in many cases, the law prevents it anyway.
What I see as the source of the angst that physicians have over universal health care, single payer, etc., is not a risk of reduced payment. If anything, such systems are likely to simplify billing mechanisms and reduce the cost of collections, and possibly, it is largely a wash for private practices.
Physician angst over these things, is, in my opinion, the intrusion into the physician-patient relationship, and loss of autonomy. We already have roo much intrusion as it is, and P4P threatens it even more.
Far too many P4P proponents and Universal healthcare advocates believe that by following more and stricter “guidelines” healthcare would improve. Evicence is still lacking that this is the case, because what has not been determined is the effect on the quality of non-measured conditions/practices/etc. Stricter guidelines, greater intrusion, and loss of autonomy all reduce the value of “expertise” that is gained by “practicing.”
If you do not know what I mean by intrusion, think about your recent interaction with your physician. How many times were you told that the procdure/x-ray/MRI that you needed would have to wait a few days so that authorization could be obtained? How many times has your pharmacy had to call your physician because the medication you have been taking for years is no longer on your “formulary?” How many times in the last 5 years have you changed physicians because your insurer told you they would not pay the one you have been seeing for so long? Ask your physician how often he deals with these issues on your behalf that you are not aware of. I do it everyday. It costs me time and money, and there is nothing I can do about it. As for those cash-paying patients… I never have to do any of these things. Those with “traditional insurance,” same thing. Medicare, commercial insurance, TriCare, you name it, I do it everyday.
And with all of this, your physician, is, like any other business, respoinsible for his/her expenses. Rents, payrolls, fees, dues, utilities have to be paid. And though I am not crying poverty, I still sweat for 2 or 3 days each payroll period that there will be enough cash to pay my employees.
So I really do not understand the source of the venom.
“I believe that much of the uninsured population simply CHOOSES not to buy insurance, since they know care will be provided anyway, if they are affected by a catastrophic illness/injury e.g.”
Hmmm…I pay $4,000 out of pocket for crappy indemnity surgical coverage. I can’t change carriers because of pre-existing conditions which don’t currently effect me and I’ll never be able to get individual coverage for long-term care.
Reading all these posts about “irresponsible” people who refuse to buy medical insurance is really aggravating. It’s not that I refuse to buy it but that nobody will sell me coverage, even coverage that excludes my pre-existing conditions.
Universal Heath coverage isn’t about how much I pay, it’s about shared risk in the largest pool possible.
All these people who say how great the system is obviously have coverage. How nice for you, but for millions of us who are excluded from the risk pool, we are SOL while you say how great the system is. Your ignorance just makes me so angry. I’ve got it, why don’t we trade insurance? You all must have some ins with the industry the way you talk, you take my policy I’ll take yours.
Do you have life insurance? Disability insurance?
Can you get it?
Do you have a “right” to such important insurance?
What do you think happened 100 years ago when none of this existed? You either paid up or were a charity case, or died.
Insurance is nothing more than shared risk with administrative costs and profits or losses each year. There is no reason anybody should feel they have a right to anything they have not or cannot pay for. It would be nice to have insurance available for those who cannot otherwise obtain it, but guess what? This will comprise a high-risk pool and the cost will be high. Think you can you get full coverage on your home on the coast of Florida? How about flood insurance that entirely protect you? Of course not. And nobody except the owners of such homes thinks other people should have to subsidize that either. Ultimately as an individual in a free society you are responsible for your own well being. You cannot expect other people to be involuntarily forced to do anything. They can be charitable however.
Anon 1:21, I can sure promise you one thing..Forget 100 years ago, but I do know that 50 years ago your right we didn’t have ins. and neither did most other people and we sure as heck didn’t pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for any medical care.
Drs. did not in any way shape or form charge anything close to what you guys charge. You went to the pcp and you actually received diagnosis from them. What an unheard of idea in today’s medicine huh? And they treated you for them, and they also gave you little white envelops with your medications in them. You did not go to your pcp and receive 4 specialists referrals while you were there and 5 different papers for tests or procedures. You also did not get 3-5 prescriptions that cost you about a months wages at the pharmacy, so when you want to compare how things use to be, please get the information right.
>>Do you have life insurance? Disability insurance?
Can you get it?
A good point. Maybe health insurance should be purchased like life insurance.
“Non-cancellable, guaranteed renewable”, like my life and disability policies.
Buy it when you’re young and healthy…..and hold onto it. Wait until you’re 55 to buy the policy, it’ll cost you.
Like they say in the insurance biz, you can underwrite a fire insurance policy on a burning house. The premium will be, the replacement cost of the house, plus an administrative fee.
There have been people giving serious thought to the concept, but I don’t know the art and science of insurance underwriting.
Anon 2:19:
Do you have any idea how medicine has changed in 50 yrs. No CT scans, No MRI’s, at best poor quality X-rays. No chemotherapy. Childhood leukemia rates with cures of 90% now were death sentances. Frankly there was nothing to offer any cancers (besides zaping the hell out of them with radiation). If you have an MI (heart attack), you recieved an aspirin and bed rest. Maybe you lived maybe you didn’t. No CABG, No catheterization and/or stent. Certainly no ACE inhibitors/B-blockers. Antibiotics had barely been invented. Yeah maybe medicine was cheaper, but for many diseases there was little/nothing to offer. Why don’t you look up the life expectancy 50 years ago. Ignorance is bliss.
For all those who wonder why patients don’t buy individual health insurance, when they don’t have insurance through an employer –
I consider myself fortunate; I live in New Jersey, where the insurers cannot turn anyone away because of age or pre-existing conditions. In the three years that I have been in a Blue Cross/Blue Shield HMO, my monthly premiums have gone from $380 to $425 to $480 to $570 a month. It’s now a tidy $6840 a year, and that’s before I ever set foot in a doctor’s office. Last year, I spent $9200 on health care, for premiums, drug copays, office visits and tests. And I’m in decent health, with only two well-controlled chronic conditions.
In other states, I would be considered either a poor risk, or uninsurable. I would easily have monthly premiums of $1000, and $5000 dedectibles. That’s if I could find an insurer who would be willing to offer me a policy.
I firmly believe that before someone spouts off the ‘Why don’t people buy insurance?’ line, they should look carefully into the insurance situation in their own state, and only then express their opinion. I gather, from reading doctor blogs, that doctors somehow think that health insurance costs around $100-200 a month for an individual, and that if only people gave up their cable tv and cell phones, they could easily afford insurance.
The next time you look at a patient and wonder why they don’t have insurance, ask yourself “Does this person look like they have an extra $10,000-$20,000 per year to go out and get insurance? Would this person be considered a good or poor risk, from an insurer’s point-of-view? Does this person have pre-existing conditions? Is this person over 40?”
On a related matter – recall how much my premiums have gone up over the last 4 years. What is driving this? I firmly believe that defensive medicine is playing a major role in this. All the extra tests, extra imaging studies, extra follow-up visits, prescribing expensive drugs, etc. The money has to come from somewhere, and it’s coming out of the wallets of patients and/or their employers.
Doctors complain that patients seem to think that health care is free. Frankly, I believe that it is the other way around – doctors think health care is free, and that it does not matter one bit how many tests, drugs, office visits, etc that they order, because someone else is going to pay for it, that someone being the insurer. Yes, some patients can’t pay, or need reduced fees. But you all know damn well that the majority of your patients have insurance of one kind or another, and that this is what pays for your incomes, and allows you to order one thing after another.
The ill-informed whining gets tiresome.
“The ill-informed whining gets tiresome.”
Nevermind that you don’t produce one iota of evidence that supports your argument for all of the those unecessary tests.
Nevermind that you are free to refuse any or all of those expensive “unecessary” tests/drugs ordered by your doctors.
Nevermind that your chronic diseases are “well controlled” thanks to those “expensive” drugs ordered by your doctors
Nevermind that most doctors right- off tens of thousands of dollars (or more) to patients who cannot or will not pay their bills.
Nevermind that I probably do more “charity” work in one year than you have done your whole life.
Nevermind that I can’t increase my payments on medicare/medicaid pt’s inspite of ever increasing costs of running a business.
Nevermind that every city/town I have ever worked in has clinics that offer a sliding scale payment system based on the ability to pay.
Nevrmind that everyone looks to NHS as the pancea when the dirty secret is their WILL BE RATIONING. If you over 65 No dialysis….No CABG…..No transplants. The doctors will make these decisions without your input. You will not be able to sue. You will go off to hospice and die. Something Micheal Moore ignored in his quasi-fictional movie.
You are right about one thing. The whining of the ill-informed is getting tiresome.
PS: For all of Mikey Moore’s whining about the US system. When he went to a fat farm where did he go? Canada? Cuba? No he went to Florida. What a hypocrite.
“Nevermind that you don’t produce one iota of evidence that supports your argument for all of the those unecessary tests.”
That is a hilarious statement to make on this blog. Which post is it that you would like the link to? There must be about a hundred of them on this blog alone, where you talk about it and admit to it in every detail imaginable.
yes and all these years later we still have one the highest infant mortality rates in the world. Why is that?
I think in the last 50 years life expectancy has increased about 5-7 years. Men still die younger than women, people still die everyday from cancer. And as for our elderly population, I think we are extremely cruel in the things we put them through, in the name of medicine. All for a few extra months or maybe a year or two. is it worth it?
Im not saying there hasn’t been alot of improvement in healthcare over the years, but maybe technology is moving to fast in that direction. Why are you intubating and doing CPR on someone who is 92 years old? Let them rest for Christ sake. I hope I have made it plain that this better not be done to me.
Why are we keeping brain dead people alive on vents for years on end. Do we think they are going to recover and be normal? Or is this some doc’s sick view of progress in American healthcare?
How much money do we spend on useless procedures or trying to keep someone alive who would be better off dead, compared to those we refuse to help because they don’t have ins.? Just how moralistic is all this? You call codes on people 90 years old and go the whole gamut keeping them breathing, (usually with a vent) and at the same time we refuse to buy some 40 or 50 year olds blood pressure medicine? Do you not see things wrong with this picture?
yes and all these years later we still have one the highest infant mortality rates in the world
There remains no consistent and reliable detemination of infant mortality from one country to another, because of differening definitions and outright lies. Bad example.
Anon 06:00:
re: “there must be about a hundred of them on this blog alone, where you talk about it and admit to it in every detail imaginable”
Do you know the difference between someone’s opinion and real peer-reviewed evidence? Try reviewing the threads. There is a lot of opinions but not evidence. Opinions are like as#$%oles. Everybody has one.
Anon 06:29:
re: “yes and all these years later we still have one the highest infant mortality rates in the world. Why is that?
I think in the last 50 years life expectancy has increased about 5-7 years”
One of the most ignorant statements around. You do have the internet you can actually look this up on your own. But since you are unable to I will fill in the blanks.
1: No we don’t have one of the highest mortality rates in the world. That would be African countries other third world countries. Yes we are lower than many other developed countries in Western Europe but to a certain extent those numbers are cooked. Why? because we count live-births differently than Europe. Lives births that we count (and die) are not even counted as live births in Europe.
2: This is the life expectancy increase (and it is more than 5 years). It took 30 seconds of research.
1930 men 58.1, woman 61.6
1940 men 60.6,woman 65.2
1950 men 65.6, woman 71.1
2004 men 75.2, woman 80.4
3: Why do we intubate 90 year old. Why do we keep people in vegetative states alive (if you call them alive?) for decades. BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT THE PATIENT’S AND FAMILIES WANT THAT IS WHY. tALK TO ANY DOC/RN. They will give you many, many examples of futile care, not because we agree with it because per pt/family wishes. That is the way it works in this country.By the way it doesn’t necessarily works that way in Europe. There is more of an emphasis on prevanative care in Europe (which I agree with of course). However, the pay off is just because you want your loved one kept alive, doesn’t mean the doc/gov’t is goingto do it., and you won’t have anybody to sue after the fact. Please. please if you really want to debate a subject don’t sound like such a ignorant fool. You are just another uneducated american joke.
is there really that much difference between 7 years and 10 years? So, in the last 57 years we have increased mens lifespans by less than 10 years and womens by 9 years. Not really much difference to the person who said 7 years.
Actually it is 54 years not 57 years. Yes there is a difference between 5 years and 10 years or 7 years and 10 years if you are the one living those years. Is it easy for you to be judgmental about who should have those extra years? Also put this in the context of an american society where now morbid obesity, diabetes and CAD are now an epidemic. Not bad increase in life span even if you don’t want to admit it.
I’m not knocking doctors who do have a sliding scale for patients without insurance.
But it’s been more than once that I’ve read on doctor blogs about a procedure that I’d never heard of – the wallet biopsy. Apperently it’s only performed on a person of limited means, without an insurance card. Unfortunately, if the wallet is not fat enough, it appears that decisions are made as to the worth of that person receiving medical care from certain health care providers, be they hospitals, testing labs, radiology labs, rehab facilities, and some doctors (specialists? surgeons?).
Is there a procedure code for ‘wallet biopsy’? It seems to be a rather common practice, from the tone of some doctor blogs.
Are you saying that we have become a society that is refusing to let our elderly loved ones die?
I can think of nothing more cruel than to keep 90 years olds alive whose bodies want to die. I lost my Dad when he was a very young man. I remember having hysterics in the hospital over it. a very gentle Doctor sat me down and explained to me what needed to be said. Dying is part of living and we all have to go there at some point. Did I want my dad to experience the kind of pain he would be forced to live with if he lived? Did I want him to never be able to get out of bed again? Did I want him to not ever be able to taste food or to enjoy life at any level? The answer to all of these questions were, NO I did not want that and most important neither would he!
What the hell is wrong with people who want to put their loved ones through such horrible things?
This is not an exhibit of love, but more an extreme in being self important, and refusing to accept reality.
That money is put to much better use on preventative medicine for those who could benefit greatly from it.
You can call me every name you can think of, or think of me as cold and uncaring, but the truth is…I still think it more cruel to not help those who can benefit most from our help, while at the same time keeping some of these people alive just to appease self centered family members.
Jesus, when I get so sick and old that I might begin to outlive my own children, someone please put me out of my misery and let me die.
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